Going to start documenting what I'm doing to fix this car.
Backstory is, i've had this car for the past four years or so as a daily driver. I bought it initially as an upgrade to my previous daily, which was a ninth gen Honda Civic piece of shit I inherited from my in-laws to get me started off right out of school. Well I'm thankful for that car, but I was glad to move on for something better.
Here is the IS300 the first day it came home and bone stock.
I decided to daily it basically in this exact shape for about two years. After that the bug to modify wouldn't go away and so I started to make slow changes.
I won't be shy about admitting it, but I initially found this photo on the Internet and basically wanted to
copy the look.
The journey there took a couple detours, however, first of which was throwing a cheap knock off Altezza grill on the car and some AVS model sixes I bought from a friend. The only real picture I have of this phase was from Vibes drift at our Airbnb, squadded up in the driveway. Needless to say, this was not the most beautiful phase.
After that, it was time to put on the 19 inch wheels I bought for the final look. The rep wheels seen in the picture I found from the Internet were no longer available when I went to buy them, but I realized that they were actually derived from Work LSI305, so I brought a set over from Japan. I didn't mind the chrome finish either. To go with this look, I bought a polyurethane lip kit mostly sourced from eBay and got it painted to match the car.
now to do some thing about that atrocious ride height
The car stayed in this shape as basically the perfect daily with plans to paint it and get a couple more trimmings put on the car to make it feel like new. Before I was able to finish that my wife got accepted to a PhD program in Texas and so we made the move from Virginia.
The car was a champion, driving across the country and made it to Texas in one piece. However, after a couple weeks, the motor started having misfiring issues. After a couple months of trying different things with no success, I ended up finding the issue was a blown head gasket. Literally the worst! There were already some issues I needed to address under the car due to an impact that kinked the fuel lines and so it was time to put the car in the garage for some work.
And that is where I find myself today. In the process of dropping the gas tank to replace a fuel check valve, which is likely the cause of an EVAP code I'm getting, dropping the fuel tank also to replace the hard lines of which I have a new set. And last but not least digging into the motor to see what kind of damage we're looking at! Feel free to follow along with this thread as I go through my painstaking process of getting this car to the point I want it.
